


a study in mycroft

by fadewords



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: (ostensibly for style reasons but rly bc i'm a lazy heck), (small amount of eurus too but mainly the bros), Autistic Mycroft Holmes, Autistic Sherlock Holmes, Gen, nothin's capitalized & all dialogue's in italics, that sweet sweet autistic holmes bros content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-26 01:41:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14391522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadewords/pseuds/fadewords
Summary: series of disconnected snapshots, or headcanons, or whatever,(or: an exploration of autistic mycroft, with particular emphasis on his relationship with sherlock in their early years)





	a study in mycroft

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Niqi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niqi/gifts).



mycroft doesn’t babble. he skips babbling. uses words here and there, phrases, as needed, but otherwise he is quiet. watchful. listening.

when mycroft is two, he begins speaking in full sentences. his grammar is perfect, his pronunciation precise, his vocabulary exactly what you’d expect with parents like that--impossibly advanced, and beyond adorable coming from his two-year-old tongue.

when mycroft is three, he teaches himself how to read. by four, he can write--though it takes effort to remember to hold his pencil the way mummy does.

-

when mycroft is six, his parents sit him down. they give him milk, and soft cookies, and they sit in front of him at the table, very serious. mummy’s smile stretches a bit wider than usual and her eyes are twice as crinkled. dad’s hands can’t keep still, twitching, twitching, twitching on the tabletop, like mycroft’s would be if he weren’t sitting on them. mummy’s brow does something funny.

they are excited, he thinks, and worried. he can’t fathom why. they are only going to tell him about the baby.

he’s heard them talking about it, when they thought he couldn’t hear them.

(stupid, really. he can always hear them, even when they murmur in the next room over with the door shut. they’re just so loud.)

but even if he hadn’t heard, and didn’t know--it’s only a baby. there’s no reason to be nervous.

but there’s a funny curve to mummy’s voice, her voice ticks up a couple octaves, like mycroft’s _two_ , and dad’s hands tap tap tap faster as she speaks, so they must be.

he resists the urge to roll his eyes at her explanation, at dad’s _do you have questions_.

why would he have questions? he knows the baby exists, he knows how long until the baby arrives, he knows how the baby came about, he knows that he will not have to share a room with the baby, and he knows that there is nothing else to know yet.

so there is nothing else to care about. so he just takes it all in quietly, says _no_ , no questions. moves on. (mummy and dad bring it up again several times, but the subject is thoroughly uninteresting.)

when the baby--sherlock, a boy--is born, mycroft is unimpressed. he is small, and wrinkly, and pink, and very, very loud. mycroft is quite sure he was never that loud.

mycroft remains unimpressed until he is, at last, allowed to hold the baby. he is struck, abruptly, with how very small he is. how little he weighs--and mycroft has an estimate down to the gram. how warm. and how very, very easy it would be to drop him the way he drops so very many things--pencils and cups and paper and clothes and sticks and balls upon balls at recess.

for a split second, mycroft is overcome with a sweeping, sickening wave of heat, and the sensation that he is about to drop, is going to drop, has already dropped the baby. his arms tighten around him instinctively and the world stills and the wave falls away.

mycroft blinks, and he has not dropped the baby. sherlock grabs his finger, and it becomes a fact of the universe that he never, ever will.

sherlock grows. mycroft watches.

sherlock crawls. mycroft spends half his time in books, and the other half prying things out of sherlock’s mouth. two days into this, mycroft arranges things so that he will not need pry bits and bobs away.

sherlock walks--months later than he should have according to all the books mycroft has devoured, sherlock walks. years later, the holmes parents will laugh about how sherlock’s first steps were towards a box he’d been told to leave alone, about how even then he was desperate for trouble and too curious for his own good. they will tell it over and over with amused, gleeful pride, fondly remembering sherlock’s determined scowl, and mycroft will listen in silence. he will never tell them that those were sherlock’s second steps. will never tell them that his real first steps were to mycroft. he won’t even tell sherlock. those first, awkward, stumbling steps, that collapse in mycroft’s arms, that wobbly grin--those are mycroft’s, and mycroft’s alone.

sherlock talks--and much as a small, stupid part of mycroft wants his name to be sherlock’s first word, it isn’t. he can’t remember what the real first word is. he doesn't care to. but he does listen to the ones that follow, tumbling out of sherlock in a rush, changing from the babbling mycroft never did to reasonable sentences almost overnight.

and then there is eurus, and eurus is nothing like sherlock. she walks on time and talks on time and never, ever crushes crayons in her little hands from sheer exuberance. she holds them carefully, delicately, and does not drop them. she is like that with everything--always so careful, so deliberate. this fascinates him first, and then, when he spots the disconnect that comes with it, the gap, the fuzz, it worries him.

(years later, years and years, he thinks, in quick, ugly moments, that it should have frightened him. he hates those moments--knows the disconnect wasn’t the problem, really, knows the problem was--) (in a more lingering moment, sneaking dragging in the back of his mind, he wonders what might have happened if he'd talked about the worry. if he'd spoken up. if maybe this all might have been avoided, if it’s all entirely his--)

-

mycroft is ten and sherlock is three and sherlock will not eat his dinner. he insists that he can still taste the vegetables. mummy says that he cannot possibly taste the vegetables, that she has drowned out the taste with other things, that he is lying.

mycroft knows this is not true. he can taste the vegetables too, even under all the spice, and feel them, too. they make him feel sick. he is positive they do the same to sherlock (but without, he thinks, the burning from the spices-- sherlock likes them).

but he does not say anything. he knows better than to say anything. he has long since learned better than to say anything--learned that hunger pangs were far worse in the long run than the momentary nausea--often made him feel sick anyway, and for much longer. it had not taken him long to learn that it was better to just suffer the meal and drown out the aftertaste with desserts. it will not take sherlock very long either (and so he does not say anything).

except it does. it takes sherlock a very, very long time to learn to tolerate things he does not like. like mycroft, sherlock stubbornly refuses anything repulsive. unlike mycroft, hunger does not coerce him into eating. mycroft does not know how he can stand it. over time, he begins to suspect--and later confirms--that sherlock just does not feel hunger very much. and so he steadfastly does not eat, for hours and hours, sometimes days and days, to the point of being rail-thin and twice as wobbly as usual. he keeps this up for a very, very long time--so long that mummy does what she never did with mycroft: she gives in. she takes the offending plates away, gives sherlock new things to eat, things he likes, anything he likes, for fear of him wasting away otherwise.

and so sherlock wins.

mycroft disapproves. sherlock will have to learn some time--and it isn’t hard, really, to just keep shut and ignore things. he tries, quietly, unobtrusively--and later, pressingly, with no small amount of adamance and snide commentary--to teach him this.

it does not work. it never works.

sherlock never learns.

mycroft first despairs, then scowls, then scowls even deeper. he never quite understands why sherlock doesn’t at least _try_ \--why he insists on being so outwardly difficult.

-

mycroft is twelve and sherlock is five and sherlock is a mess. he needs a bath. their parents are busy. mycroft must bathe him, or else suffer stickiness all over every surface in the house, making his fingers catch and the feeling linger on his skin and generally making a nuisance of everything. he would rather not suffer that, so he bathes sherlock.

sherlock doesn’t like bathing. he especially doesn't like washing his hair; it's filthy. but he does like pirates, so mycroft takes that and he uses it and he says that he can fashion a special pirate hairstyle, but it will only work if sherlock lets mycroft scrub his hair for him. after all, he reasons, he can only style sherlock’s hair if it's wet! then he takes it a step further, does something he tries never to do with sherlock: he lies, implies that the soap has special properties, that the style won't hold without its use.

mycroft more than half-expects sherlock to see through it--but, impossibly, he doesn't. it works. it works, and for five straight weeks sherlock’s hair is actually, blessedly clean.

and then he makes the mistake of explaining to mummy how he's done it. at first mummy is delighted, and mycroft is very quietly pleased--but then she goes out and she buys a spray bottle and fancy comb and hair gel, and starts doing up sherlock’s hair whenever he asks, and then it's ruined.

sherlock won't let mycroft wash his hair anymore. and the gel builds up and makes it even stickier and it's worse than it was at the start--and to cap it all, sherlock now knows that mycroft sometimes lies, a fact which he has done his utmost to keep veiled from the time sherlock could understand language (a time far earlier, he knows, than either of his parents ever suspected).

mycroft decides, quietly, not to tell his parents anything else about how he looks after his brother. they'll only muck it up.

-

sherlock and eurus play something distinctively winter-themed. it sounds, in places, like bells, like the pattering of rain on a windowsill, like laughter and song, and like the wind.

mycroft listens. blinks, once in a while. plasters a placid smile on his face. resists the urge to tug his suit jacket tighter about his shoulders, because it is precisely seventy-two degrees in the room and no one else is cold. he keeps his eyes trained resolutely on sherlock’s fingerings, so that neither violinist can deduce the sudden chill by tracking his gaze.

the notes go higher, sharper, piercing mycroft’s ears. his face does not change. eurus’s doesn’t either, but she sways just a little more with her bowing, obviously pleased. the notes shift away from the piercing frequency and back again, and her eyes flick over to him for the barest instant before shifting back to sherlock.

teasing, then.

he doesn’t bother wondering how she knows the sound is abhorrent, nor does he bother wondering whether sherlock has discovered his dislike as well. sherlock has known for years, and made liberal use of the knowledge to drive mycroft away on more than one occasion--tried to, anyway. mycroft has never reacted outwardly, except to sneer derisively or roll his eyes. he won’t react now, either.

especially not since eurus clearly knows the _reason_ he abhors the sound. sherlock has never quite been able to deduce it--has never been allowed to deduce it--but eurus, it seems, has had no difficulty. is amused at the pain, even, that a sound so small could bother him so m--

the notes go even higher, louder, until even mummy’s adoring smile begins to look a little fixed.

mycroft keeps the same placid smile, and mentally reviews next month’s plans as he watches eurus’s fingerings. there’s a meeting--her motions are fleeting, but so deliberate, he can’t help imagining a set of crayons in her hand instead of a scroll--the first thursday. then that friday, he’ll have to attend to a rather delicate matter over brunch, and--sherlock’s eyes flitting over to him, then settling, as the hint of a frown etches itself along his brow--a less delicate one over dinner. the following week--

the music softens on sherlock’s end. mycroft finishes out the month’s schedule before allowing himself to feel annoyed. he never asked for pity. and, more to the point--

more to the point--

he can’t remember how the sentence is supposed to end. or, he does--he has the thought--but not the words for it.

wonderful.

he rolls his eyes, projecting faint annoyance to hide the rising irritation and mess of other things he can’t be bothered to sort out.

now really isn’t the _time_.

not that there’s ever a good time to lose his grasp on language--but in the middle of a holiday recital surrounded by his entire family is, quite possibly, the worst. (one of the worst. he can imagine worse scenarios--national emergencies, for example, wherein he must conduct communications between various individuals and clandestine agencies, would be potentially catastrophic--but at least then he could--could--)

he drops the thought, turns his mind back to the ear-piercing recital. plays back over it in his mind, the moment eurus shift-snapped from teasing to--to--he knows the word. he does. rather than search for it, though, he settles for thinking the concept of it as hard as he can and moving on. the moment had come after…

well. fine, then. she doesn’t find his pain amusing--or doesn’t want to think she does. it’s something else. but what? he replays it once more.

oh.

of course.

it isn’t that he’s in pain that’s funny. it isn’t even that such a simple sound reduces him to--to this. it’s that he thought he could hide it.

there is no need to ask for confirmation, even if he were so inclined; a few moments after it occurs to him, the music softens at last.

too late, of course. he can still hear the sound, echoing in his ears. and even when it fades, they still hurt--and the music itself, though  _piano_ , soft, is still annoyingly sharp around the edges.

to drown out the noise, mycroft begins a familiar exercise--predicts, roughly, how the conversation will go later. what everyone is most likely to say, and what he will say in response.

it works as well as it ever does, but by the end of the little concert, mycroft is still ready to go home and lie down somewhere very quiet and very dark. first, though, he lets the simulation play out in reality: applause, praise--here he interjects the few polite words he'd planned, and as expected the set of mummy’s spine tells him that she's discarded them like so much trash. then more praise, and then idle conversation--mostly ignored but for the few snide comments everyone expects of him--and then plans for the next visit, easy to discuss because they are long-since established. and then, finally, goodbyes.

mycroft bids eurus goodbye the same as always, with a nod and a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. she surprises him by nodding without looking back.

it is a testament to how very tired he is that mycroft isn't sure what to make of it.

sherlock glances at him on the way out, frowning. mycroft stares back placidly. sherlock’s frown deepens, he rolls his eyes, and he's gone.

mycroft says goodbye to his parents, slips into a sleek black car, closes the door, and then he is gone, too.

part of him wants to sleep, but the better part, the wiser part, the part that is still calculating possible meanings of eurus’s gesture and the part which knows those calculations must stop soon, lest they begin to spiral--that part keeps him straight-backed and narrow-eyed all the way to the office.

he wants to sleep again the moment he closes the door, to lock himself in and lay his head down on the desk and drift--but he shakes his head.  
mind over matter.

he pulls a thick manila envelope from a locked desk drawer and sets to work.

-

sherlock shrieks with glee and flaps his hands, flinging fingerpaint everywhere. mycroft attempts to clean them with a dishcloth and blinks through the purple-and-blue splatter he gets across the face for his efforts.

he's glad sherlock is happy, of course, but the mess--and how can he stand that goop on his hands anyway? bad enough on mycroft’s face, he's not sure how long he could bear it squishing between his fingers.

mycroft wipes off his own face hurriedly, then captures sherlock’s hands at last, and wipes them as clean as he can in the ten seconds before they're slipped-gone and flapping again, twice as fast now, and with a different edge.

distressed.

for a moment mycroft thinks it's because he's spoiled sherlock’s fun, but that's ridiculous. he’d warned sherlock fifteen minutes in advance, and then five, and then two. it must have been--

he runs the cloth over sherlock’s hands experimentally. the flapping increases.

ah. he doesn’t like it.

mycroft understands this. he doesn’t like mummy’s striped ones. they make his hands feel half on fire.

but he doesn’t squirm when he uses them anymore. hasn’t in years--mummy saw to that. she ran the cloth over his hands again and again, no matter how many times he tried to move away or position himself by a better, softer one. and he stopped, eventually. (actually, he stopped needing his hands wiped first, even at four he could see it was the simpler solution--but on the rare occasion mummy caught him messy-handed, he’d learned to grit his teeth behind a pleasant smile and move on.)

sherlock would too, someday.

for now, though…

mycroft watches sherlock squirm and flap and nearly cry, and he puts the cloth away. _come on then_ , he says. _to the sink_. and he lets sherlock play in the bubbles until his hands are clean, and then dries them with a soft paper towel.

 _better?_ he asks.

sherlock bounces a little as he nods.

 _good_. mycroft smiles, unconsciously bouncing a little himself.

-

mycroft reads sherlock the same storybook every night for six months. sherlock never tires of it. and, though he grumbles perfunctorily the way he knows a brother should, neither does mycroft.

there is something nice about turning the same pages night after night, about reading the same words and falling into that old familiar rhythm, about knowing what is going to happen and when and how and why.

there’s a calmness to it, a peace. he can see why sherlock likes it.

his parents can’t, of course. but then, he reflects, there is very little about sherlock--about either of them, about any of them--that they _do_ understand.

and besides-- _he_ can, and that’s all that matters, really.

-

mycroft massages his temples behind locked doors. it has been, he feels, a very long day.

in point of fact, he has only been awake for three hours, and not much has happened.

but he woke ten minutes late, forgot breakfast, hurried to work, and found himself stuck in traffic as no less than four ambulances sped past with their sirens blaring.

(blaring. he’s never understood the predisposition to that word. the sound is too shrill for that, too piercing. it makes his ears vibrate.)

after the vibrating ears, he made it to his blessedly silent office--but then realized he was hungry and that he could hear his chair creak like a door in the midwinter chill every time he so much as shifted and that his eyes were starting to water at the lamplight.

and now here he is, two hours after this, staring down a stack of paper twice as thick as it should have been, and tired to the point of--were he a more dramatic man--pounding his head on the desk.

the urge is unreasonably tempting, but he doesn’t give in. he hasn’t indulged so base an impulse since he was thirteen years old.

instead, he sits. massages his temples. breathes. goes back to work.

then everything is fine, broadly speaking--until a car backfires half a block away and his phone rings ten seconds later.

he tries to blink, shrug off the startle, answer the phone--can only manage the first. his arm doesn’t seem to want to move. that should probably alarm him, he knows distantly, and it does a bit, but not enough to make it move. and so he sits frozen, the phone ringing as though from very far away and very close at once, uncaring of the impossibility.

eventually--he can’t say how much later--the phone stops ringing.

but he still can’t move. can’t speak, either, when he tries. finds it hard to hold onto a train of thought for very long, even.

his phone rings again. he still cannot answer it. there’s a knock at the door. he can’t answer that either, can’t even tell the knocker--anthea, it must be anthea, even through the fog he can tell anthea’s knock from someone else’s, and today he can smell her, too, and hear the surety of her feet on the other side by their silence, where others might, where others would undoubtedly shift, the way they always did--to go away.

and the door opens, and anthea’s footsteps enter, and the door closes. mycroft hears the lot the way he heard the phone. mycroft doesn’t react, except to wish very much that he could move that he could speak that everything wasn’t like swimming in an echo chamber filled with molasses..

the footsteps leave again. mycroft is grateful. anthea has spared him his pride at least, not tried to speak to him. not forced him to reveal that he can’t answer.

mycroft drifts. he is so tired. he would like, very much, to sleep.

he does not. cannot.

footsteps again. something set in front of him. what is it?

tea. tea, and a sandwich. two sandwiches.

he is so hungry. that is what he has been left with. odd distant-close noise, fog, and hunger.

and now food.

he would devour it if he could, propriety be damned, he’s alone in this office--isn’t he?

\--yes, anthea has gone. gone, and left him with sandwiches and tea and a sticky note. he will read that later. for now he just needs--needs--  
to wait this out.

so he does. and when he returns from the fog and can wiggle his fingers at last, he picks up the sandwiches and eats them both in under four minutes. they are not large sandwiches.

but they are filling.

he moves onto the tea. savors it, smiles. breathes out.

picks up the phone as anthea slips in with another cup.

continues his day.

-

sherlock likes pirates. mycroft does not. mycroft likes, mycroft likes--other things. but he also likes seeing sherlock smile, so he pretends to like pirates, just sometimes. he listens to sherlock talk about them, sometimes. on and on for minutes, even hours, mycroft listens.

and he enjoys himself. it feels nice, feels right, feels natural to listen like this, to learn like this, to absorb so much in so little time. it does.

it gets a bit grating, though, when sherlock gets older and stops listening to mycroft talk about his favorite things too and only wants to talk about his own--but then, he supposes, that’s little brothers for you.


End file.
